


cards

by AlmondRose



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Father's Day, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:48:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28257189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlmondRose/pseuds/AlmondRose
Summary: steph has to make father's day cards in school & she doesn't care to make one for her own garbage dad, so she decides to do the next best thing:make cards for batman.
Relationships: Stephanie Brown & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 38
Kudos: 161
Collections: The very best of Stephanie Brown works





	cards

**Author's Note:**

> based off of this post: https://sqoiler.tumblr.com/post/637876128214908928/when-steph-was-little-and-they-did-fathers-day
> 
> yes im posting about father's day yes it's december it HAPPENS ok
> 
> also a lot of the school stuff is based on my own experiences with american school stuff so idk if it's universal or not but u know

On the Thursday of the last week of kindergarten, the DVD that Miss Martinez was going to play turns out to be scratched beyond recognition, and so she gets out construction paper, scissors, markers, and glitter glue. 

“Father’s Day isn’t for a few more weeks,” she says. “But why don’t we make some cards, just like we did for Mother’s Day, okay?” 

The kids all get to work, reaching for the pile of brightly-colored paper. Stephanie Brown, who will be turning six in August, is the last one to get up. She shifts through the leftover colors--black, a pukey shade of green, blue, white. She picks up the black one and takes it back to her desk. She does not want to make a stupid card for her stupid dad. The other kids at her table are enthusiastically chattering about their dads’ favorite colors and jobs and drawing crayon drawings onto the paper. The girl next to her is cutting a snowflake out with safety scissors. 

Steph picks up a white crayon and stares at her blank card. Across the room, Dexter raises his hand. 

“What if we don’t have a dad?” he asks. Steph remembers from Mother’s Day that Dexter has two moms. 

“Make a card for someone else,” Miss Martinez suggests. “Your grandfather, maybe. Or a neighbor, or a hero.”

A hero?

Steph looks at the black card before her, and her white crayon. She smiles.

And she makes a Father’s Day card for Batman.

\-----

On the Monday of the last week of first grade, Mrs. Arnold, the art teacher, sits down her class and passes out white paper. 

“Father’s Day cards,” she explains. Stephanie Brown, seven in August, considers making her own father a card. She didn’t get him anything last year but he didn’t seem to notice, and she’s not really that mad at him this year. But he didn’t seem to notice, and when Steph thinks about it, she thinks Robin probably doesn’t make Batman a card. Steph could make another card for her own dad at home, and make one for Batman at school. 

Mind made up, she reaches for black markers and gets to work. 

\-----

On the Tuesday of the last week of second grade, Stephanie Brown, almost eight years old, sits down in art class and carefully draws a black blob with pointy ears, and a red and green and yellow stick figure, next to it, and she tries to remember what Nightwing looks like, and when she can’t remember she just draws Robin again but bigger.

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY, she writes in red marker, and she closes the card.

\------

On the Wednesday of the last week of third grade, Mrs. Arnold passes out watercolors in art class with pieces of thick paper, and tells them to make presents for their dads. Stephanie Brown, nearly nine, hasn’t seen her dad in almost four months, and she uses up almost all the black water colors at her table painting a picture of Batman. 

\------

On the last week of fourth grade, nobody sits down their class to have them make Father’s Day cards. 

On the Thursday before Father’s Day, Crystal passes Stephanie Brown, age almost-ten, a card bought from the store and tells her that they’ll mail it to Blackgate the next morning.  _ Happy Father’s Day,  _ the card says.  _ You’re the best dad ever!  _ the card says. 

Steph stares at it for a long time.

Then she tears out a piece of notebook paper and folds it in half, taking the rainbow gel pens she got in December and picking up the pink one. She squints at it and sees that it’s nearly run out, so she picks up the purple one instead. 

When she’s done drawing Batman and Batgirl and Robin and Nightwing, she decides she likes purple, and she folds the notebook paper inside the card her mother gave her, and she doesn’t mail anything to Blackgate the next day.

\-----

On the last day of fifth grade, Mr. Robinson turns on  _ The Great Mouse Detective  _ and sets out a stack of colored paper and scissors. He tells the class they can do whatever they want during the movie and even sets up chips and cookies, then he sits in the back of the classroom and maybe falls asleep. Stephanie Brown, ten-going-on-eleven, wants something to do with her hands, so she takes a black piece of paper and cuts out a batsymbol. She learned how to draw them by sticking her head out her window at night and looking at the sky, and she’s proud of her newfound skill. When she’s done cutting it out, she’s not really sure what to do besides maybe tape it to her shirt, but her dad’s been out for a week now and she thinks he’d be mad if he saw that. 

Instead, she folds it in half and writes HAPPY FATHERS DAY across the middle using white-out. Skye, the girl who sits next to her, leans over and asks what she’s doing, and Steph pauses. She’s...she’s not really sure why she keeps making these. To prove a point, maybe. She’s not really sure what point, though.

“Do you think Batman ever gets cards?” she asks in a whisper. 

“Yes,” Skye says. “Probably every day.”

“Oh,” Steph says. “Well, I probably won’t send it then.”

“Okay,” Skye says, and then she downs half of her Dixie cup of orange juice and turns back to the movie. Steph puts purple glitter glue on her batsymbol. 

\------

On the first week of April, Stephanie Brown, age seventeen, pulls a plastic bin out from under her desk. There’s a cardboard box beside her, and two other cardboard boxes on her empty mattress, full and taped shut. There’s a full duffel bag of clothes next to her, and her posters from her walls have been taken down and rolled up. All she has to do is finish going through her desk, and then she’s done. The rest of her things will be sold or something, she’s not sure. 

She pries off the lid of the bin before her and takes out old school binders and ragged notebooks, paper folders falling apart and ancient art projects. She lifts out a collage she probably made in seventh grade and tries to decipher the meaning behind it. There is a cutout of red heels from Kohls on top of a blue betta fish. 

Steph decides it will go in the trash pile and sets it aside, lifting out a yellow plastic folder. She opens it, curious, and lifts out a black paper batsymbol. She gasps when she opens it.

Her Fathers’ Day cards! 

Of course, she had never sent them, so she has all--she counts quickly--six of them. She looks them over, laughing at her kindergarten misspellings and looking at the evolution of her drawing ability fondly. This is--she totally forgot about this. Steph closes the folder reverently and puts it on top of her duffel bag. There’s no way she can get rid of this--especially with the purple cape still in the hidden part of her closet. Especially not with where she’s packing up to move to.

\----

On the third Sunday in June, Stephanie Brown, age eighteen-in-August, takes up her yellow plastic folder from where she hid it under her new mattress, and she leaves her room, tucking it under her arm. She gets like four steps down the hall before another door opens, and already an accusing voice says, “What’s that?” 

Steph whirls around. 

“None of your business,” she says. Tim makes a face at her and she makes the same one back, because she is very mature. To prove her maturity, she slides down the banister on her way to the kitchen. 

Dick and Cass are in there, doing the dishes. Steph watches them for a second and then says, “Why do you have  _ dishes  _ at this hour?” ‘This hour’, upon checking, turns out to be almost noon, but nobody wakes up early in this house. 

“Breakfast for Alfred,” Cass says. 

“You can  _ do  _ that?” Steph asks, thinking Alfred would get offended if someone tried to cook for him. 

“You can today,” Dick says, shrugging, and Steph frowns, realizes that they ganged together to make  _ breakfast  _ on  _ Father’s Day  _ for Alfred and didn’t invite her. 

It was probably an accident, she reasons, but then she remembers Tim and turns to face him. 

“Why didn’t you make breakfast for Alfred?”

“I was sleeping,” he says. 

“He’s impossible to wake up so we called it a lost cause,” Dick says. “We have extra pancakes, though, help yourself.”

Steph is still a little affronted, but she knows that she’s the newest person in the house and she’s only staying here until her mom’s done with rehab and whatever, so they probably didn’t think she’d want to be included, even though Alfred is  _ everyone’s  _ grandpa, even Babs’s. She goes to pick up a pair of pancakes and bites into one, deciding syrup can wait, and she leaves before they can rope her into conversation. Besides, she’s a little scared they’ll start referring to whatever plans they have with Bruce, and she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to react. 

She heads to Bruce’s study and pushes open the door, glad to find him in there. She thinks if she had to search for him she’d probably lose her nerve and chicken out. Bruce glances up for like half a second and then looks back at the computer, and she takes a deep breath and steps inside fully. 

Now or never, she thinks, and so she marches right up to him and slams the yellow folder on the desk. 

“What’s this?” Bruce says, and Steph isn’t really sure how to explain, so she says, “It’s, uh, I found it when I was packing my stuff, and it’s...it’s from a while ago, but I thought you might, um…”

She trails off as he picks up the folder and opens it, raising an eyebrow at the contents from inside. She kinda wants to look at his face, but also totally doesn’t want to do that, so instead she looks at the desk, and opens her dumb mouth back up. “They always used to have us do Father’s Day cards at school or whatever and I never wanted to make one for Arthur so I made those instead ‘cause...well I don’t really remember why but whatever I thought you might want to see them.”

“Stephanie,” Bruce says, and she shuts up and bites her lip, looking up at him. “You...made these?”

“Yeah,” she says. He looks back down at the cards in his hands, all spread out--even the one that was intended for Arthur that Steph never sent. He touches the one from kindergarten. “Um. You can keep them.”

Bruce stands up. Steph isn’t really sure at all what he’s thinking, but he steps away from his chair and wraps his arms around her, holds her tight. 

“Thank you,” he whispers. 

“Happy Father’s Day,” she says, and when he squeezes her she closes her eyes, exhales, and squeezes him back. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! comments/kudos always appreciated <3
> 
> if u want to reblog this fic on tumblr it is https://sqoiler.tumblr.com/post/638272275682148352/on-the-thursday-of-the-last-week-of-kindergarten


End file.
